You Just Can't Escape Incompetence
by Syrialla
Summary: We all know the story of the Dark Lord's rebirth and how Harry Potter crashed the party. But what if there was someone else who crushed the Dark Lord's dreams before Potter? What if you just can't escape incompetence?


Regarding the rating: Contains a small amount of (coarse) language, the thinnest layer of innuendo, and some Twilight bashing. Rated mostly for safety. I really have no idea if this is should be considered mature or not, but whatever.

Okay, so it has been a _long_ time since I've posted a story. Like a seriously long time. I'm just happy to have found the time to write this little oneshot, because it shows that I can still somehow eek out enough creativity to put pen to paper (metaphorically speaking).

This story was conceived after I recently finished rereading _The Goblet of Fire_ for the fifth time (or something like that). It is a great departure from what I usually write (serious, dramatic fantasy stuff), so it is definitely experimental. It's my little guinea pig. ^.^ If you like it, please leave a comment, and tell me what I did well. If you do not like it, or just have pointers for me on what to do better (I love critiques!), please comment as well. I really appreciate your opinion, otherwise I'd be flying blind here. : P

~ Syrialla

P.S. I didn't spend a terrible amount of time editing this, so I apologize if there are any spelling or grammatical errors. Also (as hinted at before), this is my first humor fic, so I am truly sorry if this is absolute rubbish. : S

Again, I really appreciate your feedback!

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><p><strong>You Just Can't Escape Incompetence<strong>

_Don't mess up, don't mess up, you can't mess up or he'll kill you._

_Well, "kill" is an understatement. More like disembowel you. Or have you drawn and quartered, disemboweled, and then have your disemboweled bowels set on fire while you watch . . . Or something worse . . . Oh, God, what if he locks me in the closet with . . . with _him_?_

Peter Pettigrew shuddered involuntarily, causing the bundle in his arms to stir slightly in response. He swallowed his bile (rather loudly) and, panting, stumped towards the two clueless teenage boys staring blankly about the graveyard with mouths agape.

Well, to be completely honest, that description is hardly specific enough for any two boys in particular to stand out in a person's mind. Let me try again:

He swallowed his bile (rather loudly) and, panting, stumped towards the two clueless, conspicuously angst-ridden teenage boys staring glassy-eyed about the graveyard, their mouths agape, a shiny rope of drool hanging from the taller one's chin. Peter had a nagging feeling that this boy had the amazing fortune of being the obsession of every preteen girl who ever laid eyes on him; he was pale, with slightly sunken features and a frock of perfectly tussled hair, and he radiated a constant glow, a sparkle, if you will. A brief scenario popped into Peter's mind of this boy baring his teeth like an animal and growling protectively over his emotionless girlfriend.

Peter didn't notice that his feet had stopped moving until he felt the temporarily-forgotten bundle stir once again in his arms. Suddenly, the shorter boy, the one called Harry Potter (Peter cringed as he thought his name), who had the unmistakable aura of one who was extremely awkward at all times (probably due to his enormous aura of wizard angst), let out a whimper of pain and dropped to his knees.

A soft hiss emanated from the bundle in Peter's arms. _"Kill the spare."_ Hurriedly, Peter fumbled for his wand, aimed it at the now-unfortunate Mr. Handsome and shrieked, a little more femininely than he would like to admit, _"Avada Kedavra!"_

The boy dropped like a lead weight. Peter suddenly felt overwhelmingly accomplished, as if he had just saved all sane adults who have standards for the films they watch and the books they read from a gruesome fate. The bundle turned slightly in Peter's arms again, and his previous mantra returned in full force: _Don't mess up, don't mess up, don't mess up . . ._

Gingerly, he laid the bundle, which had begun to emit a foul odor of rotting cabbage and fetal pig, on the ground, and lit his wand as he stalked towards the angsty boy thrashing unceremoniously in the dirt. With a bit of arm wind-milling, Peter conjured tight cords around Potter (*shudder*) that tied the boy to the nearby headstone of Tom Riddle. The boy struggled slightly; Peter lamely slapped him across the face in response. He felt another overwhelming feeling, although this time he felt as if he had angered and envied thousands of females whose only aspiration was to touch the boy, if not as he had, then in any way.

"You!" the boy spluttered, but Peter hardly heard him as he tightened the knots around him, his fingers shaking with the (awkward) proximity. Task completed, he then withdrew a black gag from his cloak and (awkwardly) shoved it into Potter's mouth as quickly as possible, as if it were something shameful to be disposed of lest the neighbors see (Peter refused to follow up with this train of thought, for he felt it would lead to places he didn't want to be).

With a billowing of cloak that was of a distinctly lesser caliber than Snape's, Peter gratefully strode around the headstone, away from the (awkward) boy and into the darkness. After a few minutes of stumbling along in the mist, Peter saw a large black object loom out of the gloom: an enormous, dank cauldron. He swiftly positioned himself on the opposite side of it and began to push it back towards the headstone.

_Don't mess up, don't mess up . . .Gah, this is heavier than Severus's mother after she passed out in the middle of - which was very rude, if you ask me; she must have had a long day . . . Well, there's no way Severus could find out about _that _. . . I mean, he doesn't even know she's still alive . . ._

Peter managed to heave the cauldron back to the small clearing by the headstone, all the while imagining Snape's face if he ever found out about his mother and Peter. Against the headstone, the boy was still struggling, but Peter paid him no mind. The frantic buzzing within his head was growing louder with every step he took towards the bundle, which was now thrashing about erratically like a mangy, one-eyed opossum with its leg cut off.

Kneeling beside the cauldron, Peter's mind suddenly went blank. _Rat pellets . . . what now?_ As if on cue, a thin, leathery opossum tail sprouted from the tip of his wand. Peter panicked, but there was no way the boy could have seen, and definitely no way the . . . thing . . . could have noticed. The opossum tail spastically whipped back and forth, smacking Peter's arm repeatedly.

_YOU'RE MESSING UP._

_Shut up!_ Peter thought-screamed at the voice in his head (which wasn't too promising a notion to begin with). His hands shook frantically as he struggled to collect his thoughts. Spontaneously, a fire burst underneath the cauldron, which was nothing short of a miracle; it could not have brought forth by Peter's conscious effort, as he had been too busy screaming inside his head at the other voice inside his head. The color of the potion in the cauldron grew in intensity until it sparked every which way, as bright as liquid diamonds (however bright those are).

"_Hurry!"_ hissed the bundle.

"It is ready, Master," Peter squeaked in reply, trying to snap off the rapidly gyrating opossum tail from his wand. He swore he could hear it squeaking.

"_Now . . ._" said the cold voice. Peter shoved his wand into his robes, trying to ignore the whipping he was now enduring. Gingerly, he gripped the edges of the bundle of robes and whipped them open as quickly as possible, choking down bile and the urge to throttle the wrinkly deformed body before him. He heard the boy scream as his eyes, too, fell on the creature, and Peter felt a small sense of pride that at least _he_ was able to look at the abomination without squealing like a little schoolgirl.

The infant-thing, as red as raw meat, reached its arms up to Peter as if to give him a deathly hug. For a split second, Peter's gaze met its crimson snake-eyes. He suddenly lurched forward involuntarily to break the stare, which counterproductively allowed the creature to wrap its slimy arms around him. One of its fingers knocked the hood from Peter's face, and he briefly glimpsed the restrained boy watching him, but he quickly turned to the cauldron and lowered the creature into it. It sunk through the liquid diamonds and hit the bottom with a small thud. For a brief moment, Peter hoped with all of his heart that that would be the end of it.

However, that couldn't be the case. He needed to continue with the plan, lest he mess up and be locked in the closet with his worst nightmare. He drew in a long breath, raised his wand, closed his eyes, and spoke into the night:

"_Bone of the father, unknowingly given, you will renew your son!"_ A tremendous cracking sound ensued, and Peter opened his eyes in time to watch a fine trickle of bone dust flow from the crack in Tom Riddle's grave towards the cauldron. It landed in the solution with a thick hiss, and the liquid turned a vivid blue. The color of _his_ eyes.

Whimpering at the thought, Peter pulled a silver dagger from his cloak, and choked out, "_Flesh – of the servant – w-willingly given – you will – revive – your master."_ With that, he held out his right hand, raised the dagger, and then brought the blade down with a sickening flourish.

_AH, MOTHER*#!INGASONOFAB*#!S#!A*#-WHYTHEF*#DIDIJUSTDOTHATWHATTHEF*#,*#!#*#!**!_

Whether of his own subconscious accord or by divine assistance, Peter somehow managed to bend his legs to the ground, pick up his once useful right hand, and throw it into the cauldron. Then he staggered over to the boy, his breath (awkwardly) coming out in anguished gasps upon the boy's face.

"_B-blood of the enemy . . . forcibly taken . . . you will . . . resurrect your foe._" Through the haze of pain (and a constant stream of expletives in his mind), Peter stabbed the crook of the boy's arm and watched his blood ooze out. He fumbled through his cloak for a glass vial (_owowow_) and held it to the boy's cut, collecting the crucial lifeblood.

Dirty deed done, Peter staggered back to the cauldron and poured the blood inside (_TAKE THAT, CREEPY FETUS_, he drunkenly mind-shouted) and watched as the potion exploded into dazzling whiteness.

_Let it have drowned,_ _let it have gone wrong . . ._

The cauldron began belching thick white smoke like a steam engine in the last throes of mechanical death. Peter watched as the columns of smoke rose into the night, ignoring the numbness in his arm and the fuzziness in his head. Here, he could make out the outline of a fluffy rabbit in the smoke, there, a cottony flower, and there, a snarling dog that gruesomely transformed into a blue-eyed demon from hell.

"Robe me." The high, cold voice broke through the sudden horror that had gripped Peter. Trembling worse than when a Muggle child had once tried to sell him chocolate mice, Peter scrambled along the ground to pick up the nearby black robes. He got to his feet and pulled them quickly over his master's head.

A knot that had been ever present in Peter's chest tightened further, causing him to choke as the white-faced man before him stepped out of the cauldron and began to observe his new body coolly. What if he had messed up? What if something had gone wrong? Peter watched in anguish from his vista on the ground as his master flexed his unnaturally long fingers, as his eyes trailed from hand to forearm, to bicep, to shoulder. He began to press on every inch of his skin, as if to make sure everything was in order. Although his back was to Peter, Peter could see his master's hands trail down his what-was-sure-to-be-chalk-white chest, taking in every muscle, down to his most likely six-pack-less abs.

And then Lord Voldemort froze. Peter could feel the air ice over. Oh no, his master surely wasn't missing _that_ . . . oh, God, Peter did everything right, he _hadn't_ messed up!

With a loud snap, Voldemort ripped open his robes fully (thankfully, Peter was behind him and so was blocked from what was probably a very terrible sight) and stared at what could only be the crook of his legs. Peter gulped and silently scrambled to his feet, tucking his bloody stump into his cloak, and began to slink away.

In an instant, Voldemort's slim fingers were crushing Peter's windpipe, forcing him to meet his crimson gaze of unfathomable hatred. Peter watched himself die a thousand times over in those flaming orbs of hell. He opened his mouth to apologize, to justify himself, to explain how he didn't know how that could have happened, but he only managed to croak out two words.

"Aw, fuck."

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><p>Peter awoke a long time later in a medium-sized closet which was lit only by a single dim bulb hanging from the ceiling. Carefully, he hauled himself to his feet, wrinkling his nose against the overpowering stench of mold and wet dog.<p>

A feral growl erupted from the darkness.

"H-hello?" Peter whimpered, shrinking into himself.

There was a deep canine chuckle, and then a pair of vivid blue eyes flashed into existence from across the closet.

"Well, hello, little Petey. I thought I smelled rat."

Fenrir's hulking form slowly took shape in the light as he advanced towards the cowering rat.


End file.
